@WIA - mmm... Most magic doesn't rely on misdirection. In fact - it has become one of those cliches that magicians like to promote since it makes the secrets of magic more arcane and interesting than they often are. For example - if you have a deck of cards that are all the same - it is quite nice having the spectator go away thinking you are some kind of genius at misdirection. When in fact the secret is that the deck was made of 52 '7 of Clubs'.
One of the big secrets in magic is that the real method is often quite mundane and very simple.
Misdirection is used more in pickpocket acts which is one of those offshoots of magic which grows in popularity every 40 years. At the moment the best in the world at this sort of thing is Apollo Robbins. He is the leading thinker in concepts involving misdirection.
He has a TED lecture which is worth checking out:
I have seen him give lectures to magicians where he explains his methods and the principles behind his act. And it was one of the most interesting lectures I have seen in magic. Really groundbreaking stuff.
I did a quick look on YouTube - and this video seems to be him explaining some of the principles behind his work. This video is definitely worth watching:
As for the idea of misdirection - magicians these days think more in terms of 'directing attention' as opposed to misdirection. Apart from a few essays buried away in old magic books - there are no actual books worth reading in this area. Since there has never really being a whole book devoted to misdrection. Tommy Wonder, Arturo de Ascanio, Juan Tamariz, Michael Close and Tom Stone have written some interesting essays in this area. But they won't make much sense unless you are a magician - since they require alot of technical knowledge. And they are buried away in expensive magic books.
In that sense - the best uses of misdirection often involve leading the spectator to draw the wrong conclusion from the evidence provided to him. This is the secret behind the best mindreading and mentalism effects.
There are small subtleties involved in such effects which lead you to being fooled by the bigger overall effect. A such 'misdirection' usally involved trying to get you to think along a certain path. As opposed to distracting you and doing something sneaky whilst you were not paying attention.
An important concept in this area is 'dual reality' which is the principle behind most of the strongest mentalism effects. Pretty much everything Derren Brown does involves elements of 'dual reality'.
'Dual reality' is a magican's terms which means you perform one trick for a spectator on stage - but the audience watching think you are performing a slightly different effect. Usually the effect you do for the spectator on stage is pretty good - but the effect the audience watching thinks you did is a miracle.
This is separate from 'stooging' (ie having a friend be a spectator and pretend to be fooled) since neither the spectator nor the audience is 'in' on the effect. So in that sense it is a more elegant method for designing tricks.
I could spend years discussing magic. Since I have devoted my life to researching its history, designing tricks and uncovering the worlds best magic. My preference is for magic tricks which have subtle and incredibly elegant methods. But I have other varied in interests in magic as well.
Lastly - of the more traditional magic tricks - the oldest one in magic ('The Cups and Balls') often makes use of traditional misdirection principles.
You can see this demonstrated by Penn And Teller in one of their most famous effectss:
And here is Penn And Teller discussing some of the principles of misdirection:
But to finish. I just want to say that the best misdirection are the small lies that you swallow without realising.
Lets go back to a deck of cards where every card is 'The 7 of Clubs'.
If I let you look through the deck - I will be busted.
And it might seem suspicious if I don't show you that it is an ordinary deck before doing a trick for you.
One way would be to start with an ordinary deck of cards and secretly switch it for my fake deck (with all the same card).
This is fine - but introduces risks of its own.
So a more subtle way of thinking is just to hand you the deck and ask you to shuffle them. You are shuffling a deck of cards where every card is the same. Which obviously makes no difference to me and the act of shuffling is pointless.
And it is because of that - that on a subconscious level - if a magician hands you a deck of cards and asks you to shuffle them, you automatically assume all the cards are different. Otherwise what would be the point of shuffling them?
It is small details like that which open the door for miracles.
Another one is called 'pre-show work'. This is the secret behind 99% of the tricks you see done on TV. Before the camera is filming - you ask a spectator to write down the name of any object in the world. on a piece of paper that the magician has helpfully supplied
The magician tells the spectator to put that paper in their pocket and not to forget the name of the object they are thinking of. You tell them you will use the name of that object later on for a trick.
Fasf forward half an hour - and the magician has the spectator on camera and says something like 'Now think carefully. Do you have the name of a random object in your mind?'
The spectator says he does.
And the magician names the object. To the viewers at home it seems a miracle. And to the spectator on stage - they have no idea how it is done either.
But here is the thing. When the magician had the spectator write down the name of the spectator on a piece of paper - he had 101 different methods for secretly obtaining that information.
But for the viewer at home - they are left with the impression that the name of the object was only thought of and had never been written down.
When in fact it had -
off camera...
Maybe I shouldn't be telling you some of these things. But I don't mind - since myself and many other magicians find such methods 'hack' and unoriginal. I am sick of seeing talentless losers look like magic gods thanks to clever editiing and unoriginal ideas.
As soon as you can pre-tape a magic show - anything is possible. You don't need TV Special Effects - you just need to control which parts of the method are done off camera and which parts are done on camera. With nothing more than a TV camera - I could make anyone of you duplicate the miracles you see on TV.
It isn't even cheating exaclty (since no special effects or stooges are actually used). But it feels like cheating because it is so easy to fool the viewers at home.
This idea was best demonstrated in another Penn And Teller trick. I fucking love those guys!
I could cover other subjects to do with the psychology of deception in magic. The above is just a small sample. And with magic - as well as psychological subtleties, you can also use sleight-of-hand, secret gimmicks and mathematical principles to fool people. So there are alot of clever principles around for magicians to mix and match. The best tricks in magic usually combine 2 or 3 different principles.
With that said - the most powerful ideas in magic are the psychological deceptions.